Pike youth program gets grant

WAVERLY — Pike County students will benefit from an $89,870 Community Connectors grant recently awarded to the Ohio-West Virginia Youth Leadership Association in partnership with Southern Ohio Communication Services and Bristol Village National Church Residences.

The grant will support Pike YLA Community Connectors, a mentoring program in Pike County high schools designed to strengthen schools and communities. Through the program, students are encouraged to apply classroom and life lessons when identifying issues of concern, proposing solutions, creating volunteer action plans, taking action and reflecting to improve. The idea is for students to learn how their own youth initiatives can promote the common good.

Among the activities through which students build networks with their peers in YLA’s Youth in Government Student Legislature and Supreme Court in the Statehouse, YLA’s Model United Nations, Cave Lake Make A Difference Day, and entrepreneurship and leadership summer camps.

Districts the YLA Community Connectors incorporate are Waverly, Piketon, Eastern and Western.